Introduction

Some weeks ago we launched an article talking about “Android for not Androids” and we thought: why not iOS too?

To provide a bit of background, iOS is the mobile operating system of the multinational company Apple Inc. At the beginning it was intended for iPhones alone, but nowadays it's used for all devices, iPads, iPods, Apple TV, and iWatch.

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A Little History

There are many versions of this operating system that was released in June of 2007. At first, it was called iPhone OS, but in June of 2010 it was changed to iOS, since it did not work just on iPhones, but in all of Apple's devices.

There is not a fixed period of time in which updates are released. Most of the updates are related to the security of the device, so it's super recommended that you keep your software up to date - it's one of the most important things you can do to maintain your Apple product's safety.

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                          The latest version of iOS is 14.7.1

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iOS Devs

What tools does an iOS developer use?

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• Xcode - It's used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and tvOS. iOS device simulator is integrated with this software; we can install any device's simulator and test their the apps with this. In addition, we can connect a physical device and test the apps directly.

• Objective-C & Swift - These are the programming languages used for building iOS apps. While Objective-C is an older programming language, Swift is a modern, fast, clear, and evolving programming language that is being chosen more and more lately.

• Cocoapods, Carthage & Swift Package Manager - These are the package managers that devs use to install, update, configure and remove third-party libraries.

• Design Patterns - MVC, MVVM, MVP, Delegation, Facade, Singleton and others. These are the most used.

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App Store Connect

App Store Connect allows you to manage your apps sales and downloads. Through that app we can submit and manage apps, invite users to test the apps using TestFlight, or review your app's sales, to name a few options. TestFlight is where developers can upload Beta versions of their apps and distribute them to be tested. Once the app is fully tested, the developer can upload the final version to the App Store. This process requires a complete review from the Apple team, which generally takes 24-48 hours.

There's a section of App Store Review Guidelines, where devs can check if their apps meet all the necessary requirements before releasing the final version.

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All in all, there are so many tools that iOS devs usually use that we could write a whole book. The idea is to give you just a few things to introduce you to the iOS world.

If you want to know more, stay tuned as we will keep on adding related articles!

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